Cries from the Earth (36 page)

There was some brief excitement when two of the pickets brought in a lone Nez Perce dressed in civilian clothing. At first Perry suspected he might be a spy from the Non-Treaty camp they were pursuing, but Joe Rabusco came over to explain that the rider was a Treaty man from Lapwai who had followed the column alone in hopes of joining the other twelve who had enlisted as scouts for the captain.

“Abraham Watsinma,” Rabusco introduced the horseman.

“Very well. He's under your command now,” Perry said as he sent them to rejoin the other scouts.

As the search of the Norton road ranch continued, company cooks started fires and prepared breakfast while most of the men curled up in the grass right among their grazing horses to catch a little sleep while they could. These ninety-nine weary cavalrymen had now been awake for something more than twenty-four hours.

Chapter 28

June 16, 1877

Mamma,

We have just watched the little party of two companies start off at dusk. General Howard remains here. If John had been here, he would have been out tonight marching with them. I can't help but feel glad that he is not, but I know he will feel he ought to have been here, and General Howard was so much concerned tonight about the command starting off without a medical officer.

It is ten o'clock and I am going to bed. We all feel so anxious. I will write soon again. I have only told you the news we have had that we know is true. Rumors of all sorts have been coming into the post all day. Everything centers here, and you can imagine how we all feel. I hope and pray it won't be another Modoc War. Love to all,

Your loving daughter,

Emily F.

Henawit,
the one called Going Fast, did not know which of the white settlers owned this deserted house standing a few miles southwest of the place the Shadows called Grangeville. It did not matter anyway. The frightened Boston Man and his family had abandoned the place, leaving everything for Going Fast and his friends to plunder.

Disappointed that they did not find any firearms or ammunition, they nonetheless did discover some food already prepared and left behind on a table: cold meat and biscuits, along with most of a fruit pie. Going Fast sat down in the middle of the floor and joined his two companions in a regal breakfast truly fit for warriors. After promptly filling their bellies, the trio located a small keg of whiskey on a box in the corner—enough inside to get all three of them good and drunk.

Accompanied by his young friend
Pahka Alyanakt,
who was called Five Winters, and the older warrior named Jye-loo—who was lame in one leg—Going Fast had left the camp at
Lahmotta
on White Bird Creek early that morning and headed north onto the Camas Prairie in search of booty and horses among those ranches the Shadows were fleeing now that the war scare was spreading like a late-summer wildfire.

Stuffed with food, their heads reeling from the potent whiskey, the warriors took to traipsing around in the clothing they found—men's pants and a woman's dresses too—dancing, singing, drinking, and carousing until all three collapsed into a deep sleep right there in the middle of the rough-planked floor.

*   *   *

Bleary-eyed following a near-sleepless night after returning to Grangeville with John Chamberlin's body, the man's widow, and their two daughters, John G. Rowton had volunteered to join George Shearer's posse going in search of any more survivors now that the sky was turning gray with dawn's first light this Saturday, the sixteenth of June.

Three miles southwest of town as they neared Abner Smith's homestead nestled against the hills, Shearer ordered his twenty volunteers to spread out and keep their eyes peeled for redskins. The moment Rowton halted his horse near the edge of the tree line, alone, he spotted the three Indian ponies grazing in the yard at the corner of the house.

For a moment he sat there, reckoning on his chances of taking the three bastards on his own—recalling the pitiful sight of that Chamberlin woman as she scrambled away from her rescuers like a terrified animal, remembering the wounded, inhuman cries that had escaped her throat as Rowton's party finally surrounded her and escape became impossible. But as much as he hungered to kill the three of them by himself, Rowton decided it prudent that he turn back to fetch Shearer and the others. Just in case there were any more of the murdering bastards in the area.

Where there were three of the niggers, there'd always be many times more.

“Shearer!” he shouted as he came in sight of the volunteers who were reaching the road that would take them through the timber to the Smith place.

“What's got you lathered?” George Shearer asked in a distinctively southern drawl as he perched the butt of his double-barreled Parker shotgun on the top of his thigh and watched Rowton rein up beside him.

“Three ponies,” John said breathlessly. “Injun ones … just easy as you please … out front of the Smith house.”

Shearer grinned, patting the shotgun while he looked over the volunteers. “You fellers remember what that boy, Hill Norton, told us these red neegras done to his family out on the road?”

Rowton looked at the anger clouding the faces of those twenty volunteers as all grunted their assent.

Then Shearer looked squarely at Rowton. “Ain't none of us ever gonna forget the sight of that poor Mrs. Chamberlin, fellers—knowing full well what they done to her, a fate that's nigh wuss'n death.”

The whole bunch yipped like coyotes with the scent of prey strong in their nostrils. John couldn't help but feel ready to string a few of the red bastards up himself, maybeso just to make their dying long and hard to serve as a lesson to all the—

“So let's go see 'bout catching us some red bucks and chopping off their balls afore we kill 'em real slow!” Shearer goaded his band of twenty.

As one they shot away, still bellowing for blood, their horses wild-eyed and wide-nosed as the twenty-one tore across that last half-mile to Ab Smith's homestead, where Rowton believed they could finally start giving hurt back for hurt.

*   *   *

His head was pounding as if someone were swinging a
kopluts
against the back of his skull.… Going Fast came suddenly awake, sensing the rough wood board against his cheek.

He blinked his eyes, slowly remembering that he had fallen asleep from the powerful whiskey right where he had collapsed half-in, and half-out, the door to the Shadow house. As he dragged up his heavy head from the planks, Going Fast realized he could actually hear the pounding—growing louder and louder.

In an instant his instincts told him it was the hooves of many horses. No one at the
Lahmotta
camp knew they had come here. Chances were it was not another war party out to plunder the scattered homesteads on this part of the Camas Prairie.

Rocking up to his hands and knees, Going Fast crawled back inside the open doorway, hollering to his sleeping friends, “Hurry! Hurry! Riders coming to catch us!”

Together the three of them struggled to maintain their balance as they lurched off the porch, landing in the yard about the time they spotted the riders approaching down the road at a gallop. Their three skittish ponies shied when the trio stumbled among them. Going Fast heard the pop of the first gun, recognized the hiss of a bullet as it sped overhead.

His head aching, he vaulted atop the bare back of his horse and brought it around, finding Five Winters already mounted and kicking his heels into his pony's ribs.

“Come on! Come on!” Going Fast shouted at the older warrior, who was struggling to control his frightened horse long enough for him to mount.

Poor Jyeloo was so lame, lacking any strength in one leg, that he could not easily mount this pony dancing about in a circle. That, and the man was older, slower from a long-ago war wound in his back. Still somewhat drunk too.

Going Fast bumped his pony right against Jyeloo's to hold it still, reaching across with one arm to do what he could to help pull the lame man atop the frightened sidestepping pony.

“Help me!” Jyeloo screamed. “I can't—”

Two bullets burrowed into the ground near the hooves of Going Fast's pony, scaring the animal. A heartbeat later another bullet whined past his ear and slapped against the house. His horse started prancing away from Jyeloo's pony.

“Here!” Going Fast hollered. He leaned to the side, holding his soldier rifle out between them. “Take it and defend yourself!”

His own pony whipped itself around as if stung by wasps and reared with a whinny. The last thing Going Fast saw as he struggled to hold onto his animal was Jyeloo frantically gripping his horse's mane with one hand, the other gripping that soldier rifle, valiantly struggling to kick that lame leg up and over the animal's back, desperate to drag himself off the ground.

Then Going Fast's horse bolted away. And he realized he had failed to leave his cartridge belt with Jyeloo. The soldier rifle had only one bullet in it. The lame one didn't have a chance against so many.

Admitting to himself that he had never been so scared for his life, Going Fast galloped in the wake of Five Winters, the two of them clattering past a stand of trees and racing across a narrow strip of pasture for the slope they would ascend in escaping south for the encampment at White Bird Canyon.

Escaping from the murderous Shadows still firing bullets over their heads.

*   *   *

John Rowton was exuberant to see how quickly they were closing in on that last warrior struggling to mount up and rein his pony away from the Smith homestead. An instant later the red bastard pulled himself atop the horse and flailed his legs to get his horse moving.

At Rowton's knee rode George Shearer, whooping and sometimes growling like that big black-haired mastiff one of the shopkeepers kept chained up outside his trading tent in the mining camp of Florence. Shearer sounded just like a snarling dog ready to lunge and latch onto your leg, take a hunk of meat right out of your arm … maybe even clamp its jaws on your throat.

Those first two warriors jumped their ponies over the fence that cut diagonally across the back of Smith's pasture there at the base of the hill. Once the bastards were around that knoll, they would have a straight shot up and over the divide to the headwaters of White Bird Creek. And from there the twenty would lose them. That's likely where the whole village of redskins was fleeing.

Rowton kept expecting that third Indian to jump his pony over the rail fence only high enough that it blocked Smith's cows from his garden crops … when the warrior's horse suddenly shied and dug in its hooves, skidding stiff-legged to a halt this side of the fence. The Nez Perce yanked brutally on the rein and started to come around for another try at the jump when he spotted Rowton and Shearer, along with all the rest clattering up behind them.

The Indian surprised Rowton by leaping off his pony, spilling in the grass. But the warrior rolled onto his feet and lumbered away, hobbling unsteadily along the fence line in a futile race.

Rowton leveled his pistol at the Indian's back and pulled the trigger. He knew the bullet struck the bastard from the way the Indian jerked, paused in his ungainly flight, then lurched away again in a painful hobble. Maybe, John figured, he'd hit him in the leg or hip.

By now Rowton was slowing his horse, so quickly was he closing the gap on his prey. Shearer was off to his right, and some of the others were sprinting up to fill in the gap between them. More guns popped now—pistols and carbines both.

Arms and legs flailing crazily, the warrior flew through the air a good five yards, just as if there had been a small charge of powder exploded underfoot. He went sprawling in the knee-high grass. While Rowton hauled back on his reins, Shearer's horse slid to a halt directly beside the warrior who dragged himself up on his hands and one knee, his back clearly bleeding in at least three places already. The Nez Perce had lumbered forward no more than a yard, clawing with one hand at his back, when Shearer pointed his shotgun off the side of his horse, holding the muzzles directly over the Indian's back, then pulled the first trigger.

The impact of that arm's-length shot hurled the warrior against the ground, where his hands clawed at the grass, a pitiable high-pitched squeal escaping his throat. Shearer's horse pranced around to the other side of the prostrate Indian, where the civilian leaned to the side, positioning the shotgun's muzzles inches from the back of the warrior's neck, and pulled the second trigger.

With a violent spasm, the body convulsed once, then lay still. Blood darkened the Indian's back, beginning to pool in the grass beneath him. The warrior's shirt smoldered a few moments until the dead man's blood extinguished the powder burns.

“Goddamn, if that didn't feel good!” Shearer roared triumphantly, shaking the double-barreled shotgun overhead as a half-dozen of the volunteers leaped their horses on over the fence, sprinting after the two escaping warriors. “Get em!” Shearer goaded. “Get those sonsabitches too!”

Rowton was staring now, transfixed on the body, when the rest came to halt in a tight circle around Shearer and the Indian. It caught him by surprise when Shearer kicked himself out of the saddle and landed beside the bloody corpse.

“Can you believe it, fellers?” Shearer drawled. “This bastard's still alive!” He pointed at the warrior's hand flexing slowly in the grass as if the Indian was struggling to drag himself away from his killer.

“Bet this son of a bitch was one of them what got to Chamberlin's woman!” someone in the bunch hollered.

“This'un prob'ly killed that li'l girl too,” another voice chimed in.

A third man growled, “Likely this bastard chopped off the other girl's tongue!”

“Well now, boys,” Shearer declared as he stepped across the warrior, placing a boot on either side of the body so that his feet were planted just below the Indian's armpits. “I s'pose we ought'n show all them other red niggers what we'll do to 'em if'n they go raping our women and killing our young'uns!”